Badger's Moon Read Online Free PDF Page A

aimed at him. Brocc was no coward. He blinked in surprise for a moment and then he smiled in his defiance.
    ‘You cannot shoot me down, Becc. I am a céile , a free clansman.’ Becc had lifted the bow slightly in order to bring the arrow flights to the level of his eye. The bow was now fully drawn.
    ‘For the third time, Brocc, I warn you that you stand in the shadow of the Cáin Chiréib . I ask for the third and last time that you proceed to your home and no harm shall come to you. Stay and you will meet the consequences of your disobedience to the law.’
    ‘May you fester in your grave! You would not kill your own people, Becc,’ sneered Brocc. ‘You would not kill us to protect strangers.’ He raised his cudgel and called to the crowd. ‘Follow me! Let us have just—’
    His words ended in a scream of pain.
    Becc had released his arrow, and it had embedded itself in Brocc’s thigh. For a moment the man stood, his eyes wide, an aghast expression on his features. Then he collapsed and fell writhing to the ground, groaning in agony. No one else moved. No one spoke.
    Becc turned with an angry frown. ‘You have been warned three times. Now, disperse to your homes!’ His voice was harsh.
    With a quiet muttering but with alacrity, the mob vanished. Within a moment there was no one left out of the menacing crowd but the crumpled figure of Brocc.
    Becc swung down from his horse as Abbot Brogán came hurrying forward.
    ‘Thanks be to God that you came quickly, my lord Becc. I feared that the abbey would be violated.’
    Becc turned to his steward, Adag, who was also dismounting. ‘Take Brocc to the forus tuaithe and have them tend his wound. It is only a flesh wound, painful but not debilitating. Ensure that he is confined there to await a hearing before a Brehon for his violation of the law.’
    The forus tuaithe was, literally, ‘the house of the territory’, which served as the clan hospital. Each territory had such hospitals, either secular ones governed under the direct cognisance of the Brehons or monastic charitable institutions under the direction and management of the local abbot.
    Adag hauled Brocc to his feet, perhaps a little too roughly. The burly man groaned and clutched at him for support. Blood was spurting from his wound.
    ‘May a great choking come on you,’ Brocc groaned, his eyes smouldering with hate at Becc. ‘May you die roaring!’
    Becc smiled back into the man’s malignant features. ‘Your curses are not harmful to me, Brocc. And remember, when you pronounce your maledictions, that it is said that under a tree falls its own foliage.’
    He glanced at Adag and nodded slightly. The steward began to drag the wounded man away in none too gentle a fashion.
    ‘In case you don’t know the old saying, Brocc,’ Adag, the steward, whispered in cheerful explanation, ‘it means that if you invoke a curse and it does not harm the person against whom you have aimed it, it will fall on your own head. I would seek an act of contrition before the abbot to avoid its consequence.’
    Behind them, Becc had turned back to the old abbot.
    ‘This is a bad business, Abbot Brogán,’ the chieftain was saying as he unstrung his bow and hooked it onto his saddle.
    The old religieux nodded. ‘I fear that the people are terror-stricken. If it was not Brocc, then someone else would put their terror to some ill use. Three young girls have been butchered and each one at the full of the moon.’ He shivered, crossed himself and mumbled, ‘ Absit omen! ’
    ‘What do the strangers have to say about their whereabouts last night?’
    ‘They each swear that they did not stir from the abbey and, in this matter, I do not know what to do. Should I tell them to be gone from the sanctuary of the abbey? That I can no longer give them protection and hospitality?’
    Becc shook his head quickly. ‘If they are not guilty that would be an injustice and we would be guilty of a great crime for violating the law of